I give thee all

I give thee all—I can no more
Though poor the off'ring be;
My heart and lute are all the store
That I can bring to thee.
A lute whose gentle song reveals
the soul of love full well;
And, better far, a heart that feels
Much more than lute could tell.

Though love and song may fail, alas!
To keep life's clouds away,
At least 'twill make them lighter pass
Or gild them if they stay.
And ev'n if care, at moments, flings
A discord o'er life's happy strain,
Let love but gently touch the strings,
'Twill all be sweet again!

 - Thomas Moore

In Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll, Alice recognizes the tune used in the song called Ways and Means sung by the White Knight.

Tell me how you live

I'll tell thee everything I can:
    There's little to relate.
I saw an aged aged man,
    A-sitting on a gate.
"Who are you, aged man?" I said,
    "And how is it you live?"
And his answer trickled through my head,
    Like water through a sieve.
   
He said "I look for butterflies
    That sleep among the wheat:
I make them into mutton-pies,
    And sell them in the street.
I sell them unto men," he said,
    "Who sail on stormy seas;
And that's the way I get my bread –
    A trifle, if you please."
   
But I was thinking of a plan
    To dye one's whiskers green,
And always use so large a fan
    That they could not be seen.
So, having no reply to give
    To what the old man said,
I cried "Come, tell me how you live!"
    And thumped him on the head.  

His accents mild took up the tale:
    He said "I go my ways,
And when I find a mountain-rill,
    I set it in a blaze;
And thence they make a stuff they call
    Rowlands' Macassar-Oil –
Yet twopence-halfpenny is all
    They give me for my toil."
   
But I was thinking of a way
    To feed oneself on batter,
And so go on from day to day
    Getting a little fatter.
I shook him well from side to side,
    Until his face was blue:
"Come, tell me how you live," I cried,
    "And what it is you do!"
   
He said "I hunt for haddocks' eyes
    Among the heather bright,
And work them into waistcoat-buttons
    In the silent night.
And these I do not sell for gold
    Or coin of silvery shine,
But for a copper halfpenny,
    And that will purchase nine.
   
"I sometimes dig for buttered rolls,
    Or set limed twigs for crabs:
I sometimes search the grassy knolls
    For wheels of Hansom-cabs.
And that's the way" (he gave a wink)
    "By which I get my wealth--
And very gladly will I drink
    Your Honour's noble health."
   
I heard him then, for I had just
    Completed my design
To keep the Menai bridge from rust
    By boiling it in wine.
I thanked him much for telling me
    The way he got his wealth,
But chiefly for his wish that he
    Might drink my noble health.
   
And now, if e'er by chance I put
    My fingers into glue,
Or madly squeeze a right-hand foot
    Into a left-hand shoe,

Or if I drop upon my toe
    A very heavy weight,
I weep, for it reminds me so
Of that old man I used to know--
Whose look was mild, whose speech was slow
Whose hair was whiter than the snow,
Whose face was very like a crow,
With eyes, like cinders, all aglow,
Who seemed distracted with his woe,
Who rocked his body to and fro,
And muttered mumblingly and low,
As if his mouth were full of dough,
Who snorted like a buffalo--
That summer evening long ago,
    A-sitting on a gate.

- Ways and Means sung by the White Knight, Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Caroll

To live

Dust Storm Before the Rain by A.Ramachandran 

I am dead because I lack desire,
I lack desire because I think I possess.
I think I possess because I do not try to give.
In trying to give, you see that you have nothing;
Seeing that you have nothing, you try to give of yourself;
Trying to give of yourself, you see that you are nothing:
Seeing that you are nothing, you desire to become;
In desiring to become, you begin to live.

- René Daumal

Canto LXXXI

What thou lovest well remains,
                                                  the rest is dross
What thou lov’st well shall not be reft from thee
What thou lov’st well is thy true heritage
Whose world, or mine or theirs
                                            or is it of none?

- Ezra Pound

Give it Time

1.8, Wonder by Janet Echelman 

The river is of the earth
and it is free. It is rigorously
embanked and bound,
and yet it is free. "To hell
with restraint," it says.
"I have got to be going."
It will grind out its dams.
It will go over or around them.
They will become pieces.

- Wendell Berry, Leavings

Let us hear from you

1.8, Wonder by Janet Echelman 

Over and over again
I have been thrown
to the ground.
Over and over again
I have risen up.
One of these days, thrown.
I will stay down.
Antaeus, write home!

- Wendell Berry, Leavings

The Thing Is

to love life, to love it even
when you have no stomach for it
and everything you've held dear
crumbles like burnt paper in your hands,
your throat filled with the silt of it.
When grief sits with you, its tropical heat
thickening the air, heavy as water
more fit for gills than lungs;
when grief weights you like your own flesh
only more of it, an obesity of grief,
you think, How can a body withstand this?
Then you hold life like a face
between your palms, a plain face,
no charming smile, no violet eyes,
and you say, yes, I will take you
I will love you, again.

- Ellen Bass, Mules of Love

A Woman Speaks

Moon marked and touched by sun  
my magic is unwritten
but when the sea turns back
it will leave my shape behind.  
I seek no favor
untouched by blood
unrelenting as the curse of love  
permanent as my errors
or my pride
I do not mix
love with pity
nor hate with scorn
and if you would know me
look into the entrails of Uranus  
where the restless oceans pound.

I do not dwell
within my birth nor my divinities  
who am ageless and half-grown  
and still seeking
my sisters
witches in Dahomey
wear me inside their coiled cloths  
as our mother did
mourning.

I have been woman
for a long time
beware my smile
I am treacherous with old magic  
and the noon's new fury
with all your wide futures  
promised
I am
woman
and not white.

- Audre Lorde

The force that through the green fuse drives the flower

The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees
Is my destroyer.
And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose
My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.

The force that drives the water through the rocks
Drives my red blood; that dries the mouthing streams
Turns mine to wax.
And I am dumb to mouth unto my veins
How at the mountain spring the same mouth sucks.

The hand that whirls the water in the pool
Stirs the quicksand; that ropes the blowing wind
Hauls my shroud sail.
And I am dumb to tell the hanging man
How of my clay is made the hangman’s lime.

The lips of time leech to the fountain head;
Love drips and gathers, but the fallen blood
Shall calm her sores.
And I am dumb to tell a weather’s wind
How time has ticked a heaven round the stars.

And I am dumb to tell the lover’s tomb
How at my sheet goes the same crooked worm.

- Dylan Thomas

Sunflower Sutra

Sunflowers by Van Gogh

"..You were never no locomotive, Sunflower, you were a sunflower!  
And you Locomotive, you are a locomotive, forget me not!
So I grabbed up the skeleton thick sunflower and stuck it at my side like a scepter,
and deliver my sermon to my soul, and Jack’s soul too, and anyone who’ll listen,
—We’re not our skin of grime, we’re not dread bleak dusty imageless locomotives, we’re golden sunflowers inside, blessed by our own seed & hairy naked accomplishment-bodies growing into mad black formal sunflowers in the sunset, spied on by our own eyes under the shadow of the mad locomotive riverbank sunset Frisco hilly tincan evening sitdown vision."

- Allen Ginsberg

Flowers

Red Poppies and Daisies by Van Gogh 

I know someone who kisses the way
a flower opens, but more rapidly.
Flowers are sweet. They have
short, beatific lives. They offer
much pleasure. There is
nothing in the world that can be said
against them.
Sad, isn’t it, that all they can kiss
is the air.

Yes, yes! We are the lucky ones.

- Mary Oliver

Song

Untitled by A.Ramachandran

The weight of the world
is love.
Under the burden
of solitude,
under the burden
of dissatisfaction

the weight,
the weight we carry
is love.

Who can deny?
In dreams
it touches
the body,
in thought
constructs
a miracle,
in imagination
anguishes
till born
in human--
looks out of the heart
burning with purity--
for the burden of life
is love,

but we carry the weight
wearily,
and so must rest
in the arms of love
at last,
must rest in the arms
of love.

No rest
without love,
no sleep
without dreams
of love--
be mad or chill
obsessed with angels
or machines,
the final wish
is love
--cannot be bitter,
cannot deny,
cannot withhold
if denied:

the weight is too heavy

--must give
for no return
as thought
is given
in solitude
in all the excellence
of its excess.

The warm bodies
shine together
in the darkness,
the hand moves
to the center
of the flesh,
the skin trembles
in happiness
and the soul comes
joyful to the eye--

yes, yes,
that's what
I wanted,
I always wanted,
I always wanted,
to return
to the body
where I was born.

- Allen Ginsberg:

Self-Portrait

It doesn’t interest me if there is one God
or many gods.
I want to know if you belong or feel
abandoned,
if you can know despair or see it in others.
I want to know
if you are prepared to live in the world
with its harsh need
to change you. If you can look back
with firm eyes,
saying this is where I stand. I want to know
if you know
how to melt into that fierce heat of living,
falling toward
the center of your longing. I want to know
if you are willing
to live, day by day, with the consequence of love
and the bitter
unwanted passion of your sure defeat.
I have heard, in that fierce embrace, even
the gods speak of God.

- David Whyte, From River Flow, New and Selected Poems,  Many Rivers Press

Hardness of Heart

Guernica by Picasso 

In the first watch no death but made us mourn;
Now tearless eyes run down the daily roll,
Whose names are written in the book of death;
For sealed are now the springs of tears, as when
The tropic sun makes dry the torrent's course
After the rains. They are too many now
For mortal eyes to weep, and none can see
But God alone the Thing itself and live.
We look to seaward, and behold a cry!
To skyward, and they fall as stricken birds
On autumn fields; and earth cries out its toll,
From the Great River to the world's end--toll
Of dead, and maimed and lost; we dare not stay;
Tears are not endless and we have no more.

- Edward Shillito

Decade

Self portrait by Amrita Sher-Gil 

When you came, you were like red wine and honey,
And the taste of you burnt my mouth with its sweetness.
Now you are like morning bread,
Smooth and pleasant.
I hardly taste you at all for I know your savour,
But I am completely nourished.

- Amy Lowell

Prometheus Unbound

Dancing Woman by Rabindranath Tagore

     This is the day which down the void abysm
     At the Earth-born's spell yawns for Heaven's despotism,
       And Conquest is dragged captive through the deep;
     Love, from its awful throne of patient power
     In the wise heart, from the last giddy hour
       Of dread endurance, from the slippery, steep,
     And narrow verge of crag-like agony, springs
     And folds over the world its healing wings.

     Gentleness, Virtue, Wisdom, and Endurance--
     These are the seals of that most firm assurance
       Which bars the pit over Destruction's strength;
     And if, with infirm hand, Eternity,
     Mother of many acts and hours, should free
       The serpent that would clasp her with his length,
     These are the spells by which to reassume
     An empire o'er the disentangled doom.

     To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite;
     To forgive wrongs darker than death or night;
       To defy Power, which seems omnipotent;
     To love, and bear; to hope till Hope creates
     From its own wreck the thing it contemplates;
       Neither to change, nor falter, nor repent;
     This, like thy glory, Titan, is to be
     Good, great and joyous, beautiful and free;
     This is alone Life; Joy, Empire, and Victory!

      - From Prometheus Unbound, Percy Bysshe Shelley

How To Be a Poet (to remind myself)

Make a place to sit down.
Sit down. Be quiet.
You must depend upon
affection, reading, knowledge,
skill — more of each
than you have — inspiration,
work, growing older, patience,
for patience joins time
to eternity. Any readers
who like your poems,
doubt their judgment.

Breathe with unconditional breath
the unconditioned air.
Shun electric wire.
Communicate slowly. Live
a three-dimensioned life;
stay away from screens.
Stay away from anything
that obscures the place it is in.
There are no unsacred places;
there are only sacred places
and desecrated places.

Accept what comes from silence.
Make the best you can of it.
Of the little words that come
out of the silence, like prayers
prayed back to the one who prays,
make a poem that does not disturb
the silence from which it came.

- Wendell Berry

Embody

God speaks to each of us as he makes us,
then walks with us silently out of the night.
These are the words we dimly hear:
You, sent out beyond your recall,
go to the limits of your longing.
Embody me.
Flare up like a flame
and make big shadows I can move in.
Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Just keep going. No feeling is final.
Don't let yourself lose me.
Nearby is the country they call life.
You will know it by its seriousness.
Give me your hand.

-- Rilke - Book of Hours, I 59

Threshold

Passage by Neha

[We know that we must at last forsake the world, and we are accustomed in moments of weariness or exaltation to consider a voluntary forsaking; but how can we, who have read so much poetry, seen so many paintings, listened to so much music, where the cry of the flesh and the cry of the soul seems one, forsake it harshly and rudely? - W.B. Yeats, September 1912, Introduction to Gitanjali]

I was not aware of the moment when I first crossed the threshold of this life. What was the power that made me open out into this vast mystery like a bud in the forest at midnight? When in the morning I looked upon the light I felt in a moment that I was no stranger in this world, that the inscrutable without name and form had taken me in its arms in the form of my own mother. Even so, in death the same unknown will appear as ever known to me. And because I love this life, I know I shall love death as well. The child cries out when from the right breast the mother takes it away to find in the very next moment its consolation in the left one.

- Rabindranath Tagore, Gitanjali

One

We are all the more one because we are many,
For we have made ample room for love in the gap where we are sundered.
Our unlikeness reveals its breadth of beauty radiant with one common life,
Like mountain peaks in the morning sun.

- Rabindranath Tagore